All or Nothing
by MissHikaHaru
Summary: Under the impression that you've been invited to a New Year's party, you're nothing short of exasperated when you find out it's just Phil and his houseplants trying to play matchmaker with you and Dan. Again. After an extensive drinking game ends with you and Dan being left alone, however, you find yourself beginning to wonder why you ever fought Phil's attempts in the first place.


_Happy New Year!_

 _**Now updated to be in 2nd Person, so hopefully I haven't missed anything that's still in 1st xD_

* * *

"Are you done putting up the fairy lights yet?" you heard Phil call from the room beyond, after a particularly loud clatter caused by your having knocked over the Tetris lights into the (thankfully unlit) fireplace.

"Almost," you replied, your voice strained from the struggle of keeping the lights aloft while also reaching for the roll of Sellotape you'd somehow managed to drop down Dan's Sofa Crease. A moment later Phil pushed the living room door open with his elbow, three mugs held precariously in his all-too-clumsy hands; two were brimming with hot chocolate and spray-cream - or, at least, what little that had been salvaged from the last cooking video, where Dan had had to be forcibly restrained from attempting to spray the entire can into his mouth at once - and the third, Hello Kitty mug, with coffee. "How come Dan _always_ get the Hello Kitty mug?" you asked with mild annoyance as he set them down on the table, and he straightened up to inspect your handiwork.

"You knows it's his favourite," he responded instantly, "it completes his - "

"Aesthetic," you finished, tipping over one of the many monochrome sofa cushions in an attempt to clear the way for your foot to slip through the ring of tape and hoist it into the air. Phil hastily ducked and retrieved it from its position wedged down the back of the cushions and held it up to you. "Thanks." You took the roll of transparent sticky nightmares from him and bit off a section to glue the plastic coated wires to the ceiling. "Though I guess it's only fair, after we stole his lights while he's out."

"Well, if you put it like that..."

"And you're sure he won't mind, right?" you pondered aloud, essentially punching the wall to get the lights to stick since they apparently refused to do so without serious persuasion. "I mean; he gets rather touchy when people mess with his aesthetic..."

"Of course he won't mind," Phil assured you, taking out a marshmallow ghost from his hot chocolate and flicking it into his mouth. "Not since _you_ did it." He shot you a wink; to which you responded with a sigh of exasperation.

"For the last time, Phil," you said, stepping off the sofa and replacing the cushions - rather more vigorously than would have been necessary, "Dan and I are _not_ a couple! Neither are we going to be, before you try and start anything - again! We're just friends, just the same way that I'm friends with you."

"I don't know about that," he conceded, sipping thoughtfully on his hot chocolate. There was a vague air of mischief about him. "Me and Dan are best friends, but you'd never catch me making lovey-dovey eyes at him like you do - "

"Tell that to the fangirls..." you muttered under your breath, slumping yourself down in the Sofa Crease and reaching for your own mug. You'd always loved sitting there – even though Phil called it 'Dan's Special Spot' it was where you always sat when you came to visit. At first Dan had been marginally offended that someone had dared take his beloved Tumblr-browsing station away from him, but after we got to know each other better he seemed to care less and less. Sometimes you'd pop round if you were passing by, and he'd deliberately move to allow you the seat while we had our little chat and move back after we'd said goodbye. My favourite thing about sitting there, collapsed between the two sofa cushions, was that they seemed to smell like him, warm and coffee-tinted. It made slumping down into it feel like he was there with you, making sassy comments and tripping over the ends of his jeans as they fell down thanks to his dysfunctional belt.

"What was that?" Phil asked, not quite having caught your grumblings.

"Nothing," you said, watching with amusement as he perfected the angle at which Susan 3, his latest house plant and Christmas present from you, sat upon the mantelpiece. "Just that you'd be too busy making eyes at your stupid houseplants to pay attention to Dan in the first place."

"Phil!" we heard a familiar voice shouting from the hall below, interrupting Phil's (no doubt highly inoffensive) comeback; Dan was home, back at last from Tesco with the latest stock up for the new year. "Can you let me in? I can't reach my keys because of these bloody bags! Of course _you'd_ add three boxes of Frosties to the list last minute..." he added with a mutter.

"But Susan 3 isn't ready yet..." you heard Phil whisper, flicking a bit of dried dirt off the little ceramic pot, as though brushing her down before a formal occasion; just typical of him to treat it like it had feelings. Dan had been absolutely right in saying that his roommate had an addiction. Rolling your eyes, you pushed yourself from the sofa and set down your mug.

"I'll go," you told the indecisive lion boy, who didn't exactly seem to be paying attention to anything besides Susan 3, and you slipped through the doorway to make your way down the stairs to the front door of the apartment. You pulled the door open and stepped back to make way for Dan to come through. Arms laden with bags of groceries, he stopped just inside the doorway when he saw you.

"Hey," he said, surprise in his tone. His eyes, however, seemed to brighten - even in the dim light from the hall. You noticed that he'd deigned to straighten his hair, or else the typical British weather had knocked the hairspray right out of it, for it was in its natural hobbit curls – albeit rather damp from the rain and his predictable nature of having forgotten the bring an umbrella.

"Hey."

His dark brown eyes flicked momentarily up the stairs to see the living room door ajar, Phil's gentle warble of one half of a Disney duet with his houseplant permeating the sudden quiet between us. He looked back to you, and you saw he was smiling.

"Wasn't expecting to find you here."

"Phil invited me," you said, edging round him with what little room there was in the confined corridor and closing the door behind him. "I wasn't really doing anything tonight, so I thought - why not? I haven't seen you since Christmas."

"Because six days is _such_ a long time," Dan mused in his sarcastic way, proffering one of the bulging plastic bags toward you. "Can you give me a hand with these? Phil's had a lot of new cravings."

"You say Phil," you intoned, taking the bag as he started upstairs, "but you and I both know you really mean you." Dan seemed to elect not to hear this, and you laughed as he cleared his throat with a noise that sounded rather like, "Shut up." Hitching the straining plastic into your arms, the feeble handle threatening to snap under the weight of the bag's contents, you followed him. As he pushed his way into the living room, you heard him screeching in a way similar to how he would should Eliza Pancakes have appeared outside the door.

"What have you done!?" he cried, his voice suddenly far more high pitched than usual, dropping the bags on the table to stare at the ceiling and glaring at his roommate, who had turned with a start at the sudden scream. "Phil, did you seriously take the lights from my room _again_!?"

" _I_ didn't take them," Phil said simply, admiring the gentle glitter that now enveloped the room as he offered the Hello Kitty mug to his best friend; Dan accepted it begrudgingly and took an I-hate-you-you-sneaky-lion-loving-bastard-but-you're-too-nice-to-hate-really sort of sip. He was too consumed with the change of interior design to notice your having entered, exchanging the mildly mischievous smile that Phil had sent your way. Not that it was possible at all for Phil to be devious in any way, shape or form - convincing you to take down Dan's fairy lights for New Year's Eve decorations was about as close to a criminal mastermind as he would ever come. "She did."

Dan, now realising your presence in the room, turned his head to look at you over his shoulder.

"She decorated the whole apartment for us," he continued, and you shrugged.

"The houseplants helped," you said, folding your arms and walking toward the duo. You came to a halt beside Dan, who - now over the shock that someone had dared touch his precious fairy lights - was realising that the room was festooned with all sorts of decoration; flower crowns mostly, both aesthetically pleasing and surprisingly complimentary with the decor of Phil's mini-greenhouse of potted plants. Paper snowflakes, far more detailed and actually snowflake-shaped than those of the DanAndPhilCrafts video, hung against the evening darkness behind the windows, and Dan noticed his Levi and Eren figurines in front of the TV wearing tiny paper crowns. The Dan vs. Phil board was wrapped in the excess tinsel he himself had refused to let Phil overcrowd the Christmas tree with. As he sipped his coffee, he noticed more and more little things that hadn't been there when he'd left two hours ago. Even the Iron Man poster on the wall was wearing a left over paper hat from the Christmas crackers.

"When exactly did you get here?" he asked, poking one of the snowflakes suspiciously.

"About ten past five, I think?" you replied, picking up your not-so-hot chocolate and watching him with a small smile that you masked behind the mug. Dan sighed as he looked back at Phil.

"You mean to tell me you called her the _literal moment_ I left the house?" he requested of his roommate, who pursed his lips awkwardly as his bright blue eyes trailed away to stare fixedly at nothing in particular, just as he always did when in this sort of situation. Dan, however, knew the look every bit as much as you did - better, in fact. "Phil!"

"Well, we didn't have a Halloween party this year!" Phil responded quickly, gesticulating animatedly in his usual manner, "And we were texting loads earlier, and - "

"Oh, so _that's_ why you were taking so long in the bathroom!" Dan interrupted, doing a Becky and placing his hands on his hips. "I thought you were playing bloody Dragon City again, with your stupid mojito dragon that you're so obsessed with..." He looked over at you with exasperation in his eyes, but you could see the tiniest shadow of the dimples around his pursed mouth that always started to form when he was trying hard not to start smiling.

"She said she wasn't doing anything," Phil continued before Dan could cut in again, still gesticulating, "So I thought it'd be a nice surprise for you, you know?"

"So it wasn't just a 'casual hangout' after all," you suddenly said, looking from Dan to Phil. "I wondered why PJ and Chris weren't here yet..." Phil, lacking in subtlety as always, cast a glance to Susan 3 as if asking for backup.

"Maybe they're just... late?" he offered hopefully.

"You sneaky little - " But you were unable to insult him, for after all you were actually glad to be there. You didn't have anything planned at all, save for maybe drunk texting Dan when it got to midnight, so it was genuinely nice to have been invited round - even if it was for that sneaky skinkbrain to try and match-make you and a best friend, for what was perhaps the hundreth time. This would make for the latest attempt since Christmas, where he'd wrongly timed the set-up of some mistletoe so that you ended up with a kiss on the cheek from PJ as he made to enter the kitchen in Dan's place - Dan having been too busy obsessing over the newest addition to his all-black wardrobe to put his mug in the dishwasher himself. Phil, it seemed, was determined for this ship to fire its cannons of canon before the year was out.

"I'm glad you're here, anyway," Dan said, pulling you out of your reverie. He was smiling, grinning like the hobbit-haired idiot that he was with those ridiculously white teeth and those stupid little dimples. You returned it, catching Phil's eye as you did so, watching us and smiling expectantly, with his houseplant cradled in his arms as though Susan 3 were watching us too. He reminded you strongly of that one character in every anime that's obsessed with the leading couple-that-aren't-a-couple. The hopeful look in his eyes made it seem rather like he thought his master scheme was well on its way to a perfect pay-off.

"Me too," you replied, narrowing your eyes at Phil and shaking your head disapprovingly, drawing your hand across your neck to send him advance warning of his imminent fate; Dan, suddenly having noticed the tray of cupcakes behind the shopping bags we had dumped, wasn't paying any attention at all to the non-verbal argument taking place between his two closest friends, concerned only with whether or not he was able to shove them into his mouth whole. Evidently, after a mild bout of choking, causing both yourself and Phil to quit our silent shouting match to turn and stare at him, he could; this discovery, of course, was life changing.

"Ohmuhg – " he managed to moan, dribbling crumbs from his overstuffed mouth. He swallowed with evident difficulty, screwing up his face and balling his fists as if triumphant. "They're _orgasmic_!" You sniggered, and he turned to face us, his eyes alight. "Did you make these?" he asked you, already fumbling behind him to select another.

"What about me?" Phil pipes up, hurt in his voice. "I could have made them. I mean; secretly, while you weren't in the kitchen…"

"Phil, you know what happens when we try and bake anything," Dan answered, stuffing the second cake into his mouth and moaning with delight. He presented you two thumbs up, before realising there was icing on one of his hands and promptly wiping it off on his jeans.

"I made them this morning," you said, sinking back down into the Sofa Crease and drawing up your legs beneath you. "Mum got me a new Delia book for Christmas, so I thought I'd – "

At the mention of Delia Smith, however, Dan had flung his arms in the air as if praising the woman you knew to be his greatest inspiration and love interest.

"It's only too bad she's married, Dan," Phil said, draining his hot chocolate and setting the empty mug beside Susan 3's pot. "So…" He looked from Dan to you, smiling expectantly, "any requests for the night?"

At first you shook your head, and Dan shrugged He was reaching surreptitiously for another cake when you noticed something amid the mass of wires, remotes and DVDs that were shoved away beneath the TV.

"I mean, I'm still kinda behind on Game of Thrones," you said slowly, getting up from the sofa and walking toward the TV, bending down to retrieve the large box. Turning, you held it up for them to see. "I reckon I could finish season five before midnight."

"I'm in," Dan assented immediately, eyes fixed upon the cover – Daenerys, of course. "Phil?"

"Sure."

You grinned at them as you straightened up.

"We could make a drinking game out it," you suggested, "If we were to feel _really_ festive for the new year…"

"What – drink every time someone dies?" Dan asked, shirking off his coat and dropping it over the back of the nearest dining chair.

"And every time anyone swears," you added. "Things like that. It's really fun, I've played with my friends loads of times."

"We'll be drunk in half an episode," Phil laughed.

"Hell yeah we will!" Dan pressed, making his way over to the settee and sitting just beside the Sofa Crease, leaving just enough space for you. You looked at him for a moment, and he sent you a subtle sort of smile, one that didn't quite capture his usual awkwardness – rather, it seemed almost shy, as though he wondered whether or not you might return it. You did, of course, for you were glad to know that he now really was comfortable enough around you to give up his precious seat without any sort of precedent.

Phil ambled over to the door to retrieve some glasses, and the all-important drinks to go with them, while you cracked open the case and riffled through the multiple disks till finding the one you wanted. You began humming the show's theme as you clicked the button to open the DVD player, slotting in the disk. My smile lingered about your face, now almost absentminded as you made your way back over to Dan on the sofa. Pulling the coffee table over with you. You dropped down next to him, shuffling down to reach optimum crease-slump comfort. Beside you, Dan did the same, kicking off his shoes and setting his feet up on the table. It was a system we understood well by now; Phil got refreshments, you and Dan decided who would have the Sofa Crease, and the three of you sank down to achieve the desired number of chins before switching off the lights and watching films till you'd run out of food or the will to remain awake.

While we waited for Phil, now to be heard humming something vaguely reminiscent of a One Direction song, and as the title screen music began to play, you remembered back to before this room had become your new favourite place; when Phil had first introduced us you'd been so excited to finally meet the other half of his double act, and how he was full to bursting with those awkward smiles where he wasn't quite sure what to think of this old uni friend of his closest companion. We'd gotten on well enough, went out for drinks a couple of times with Phil and the others, found we shared a number of interests, and then – after seeing one another get past any state of embarrassment at last year's (highly alcoholic) Halloween party – became almost as inseparable as he was with Phil. While it was true that he was a largely unassuming and awkward person, aside from moments like those where he wins a Dan vs. Phil, you hadn't seen him smile with any kind of reserve for over a year, so having seen that unexpected bashfulness you wondered why he could have given you a smile _quite_ like that one.

Just then the lights switched off, and the room was illuminated solely by the fairy lights above our heads and the glare of the television screen as Phil's silhouette began setting down armfuls of assorted alcohol bottles and cans upon the low table before us, pushing Dan's feet away.

"Thanks, Phil," we said together, and Dan retrieved two cans of beer, handing one to you.

"So which episode are we starting from?" he asked, unsealing the top of his can with a hiss as Phil dropped himself down on your other side.

"Seven," you replied, and Phil – retrieving the only remote with batteries in from down the side of the sofa – pressed play. You raised your can as the theme music began to play. "So we drink every time a character we choose is onscreen, so Dan you're obviously – "

"Daenerys," we said together, grinning at each other.

"Phil?"

"Oh, God, um… I don't know, let's go with… Robb; why not?"

"Well, I can think of one reason we won't be seeing him…"

"Shut up, Dan, we don't talk about that!"

"Guess I choose Jon," you shrugged, rather thinking that his curly brown hair reminded you an awful lot of someone whose Sofa Crease you'd stolen.

"Of course _you'd_ choose Jon," Dan mused, bobbing his head in time to the epic music.

"Of course _you'd_ choose Dany," you countered.

"I wanted to have Jon…" Phil mumbled.

"We'll both have Jon, Phil," you said, "We can remind each other when we get past paying attention." Phil seemed about to speak, but then the opening sequence ended.

"Right, then," Dan said, raising his can to the two of us. "Cheers, guys."

"Cheers."

"Game on, I guess," you grinned, preparing yourself for one hell of a hangover.

A few hours later, giggling profusely as we neared the very end of the last episode, the three of us had become a tangle of limbs upon the sofa. The mini-marathon had started off perfectly ordinary, but after roughly three quarters of an episode your head had slipped onto Dan's shoulder, and about an episode and a half after that our already abominable postures had been reduced to yield what can only be described as quintuple chins. The time between then and now had seen a lot of shouting, bad singing, and drinking, until suddenly the world seemed to erupt with hilarity.

I didn't really know what was so funny, actually; Phil had paused the DVD to run to the bathroom, and had done so at just the right time to see some truly spectacular faces. Dan had started laughing, in that painfully endearing, loud, carefree laugh where his eyes crinkle until they almost disappear as he begins rocking back and forth. It was a laugh you loved so much but heard so sparingly that you'd wanted to keep it going, so you'd started laughing too; no doubt he found your interspersed hiccupping more amusing still, for he kept laughing till Phil came back and tripped on top of us from trying to jump back into his seat.

This, of course, was simply too funny for a trio of hysterically out-of-it idiots, so we kept laughing and laughing until Phil somehow slipped off the sofa, taking half the cushions with him, meaning that what little back support you had was now wrenched from beneath you; you slid backwards with them, but grabbed hold of Dan's shirt to try and steady yourself, succeeding only in pulling him down on top of you instead. Cackling too much to care, we didn't notice Phil crawling out from under the coffee table and staggering out of the room, murmuring an incoherent adaptation of, "Need to go to bed." In fact, it took rather a number of minutes before we'd quieted down enough to notice that we were alone, still lying on each other.

"Sorry," Dan mumbled, peeling himself off you and sitting back up.

"It's fine," you replied, head a little dizzy and back rather sore from laughing so hard. He looked at the still paused TV screen, yawning a little.

"There's only a few minutes left," he commented, fumbling around confusedly for the remote as you sat up too. "Do you still wanna finish, or – "

"Nah, just leave it," you yawned, reaching for your half-finished glass of wine. You eyed to dark liquid swilling about inside, unsure whether or not to finish it or save your liver. "I don't know if I can finish this, but I don't want it to go to waste…"

"All or nothing," Dan sighed, propping himself up beside you against the sofa cushions that had been saved Phil's trip to the ground. You looked at him, your hazy vision narrowed in confusion.

"Huh?"

"That's what Phil always says when he thinks he might lose something important to him," he explained, rubbing a groggy hand across his eyes as he pulled out the remote from where it had fallen. "He usually just pulls it not to lose a game, but lately he's started using it as a kind of motto."

"What?"

"You may as well go in for the kill if you get the chance, right?"

"All or nothing…" you pondered aloud, as Dan flicked off the TV and dropped the remote back on the floor. Now the room was completely black save for the string of lights twinkling directly above our heads. You could hear the rain pattering lightly on the window panes, and Phil's rumbling snores from his room down the corridor. Dan's breathing had slowed beside you, low and deep, and for a moment you wondered if he'd fallen asleep. You continued contemplating the glass in your hands, and what he had said: _when he thinks he might lose something important to him._ You didn't exactly understand the comparison of what Phil saw as important and half a glass of wine, but you almost wondered if his words had had a deeper connotation – not that you were in any state of mind to be getting philosophical in any way.

You cast a glance sideways at Dan, though from the way he didn't seem to be facing you anymore, you thought that he really must have dozed off. He seemed so comfortable, and he felt so warm sitting so close to you, with his curly hair all mussed across his face. You supposed that, if that was the case, you wouldn't mind at all falling asleep beside him. "Guess I'm going all in," you said, more to yourself than the boy you thought to be sleeping, and with that you downed the glass in one.

"I was kind of hoping you'd say that," Dan said softly as you replaced the now empty glass upon the overflowing coffee table. You looked at him, surprised to see him looking back at you, the tiny fairy lights seeming to dance in his deep brown eyes as you struggled to keep your own in focus.

"How… What do you mean?" you asked, feeling oddly transfixed by the light in his eyes that wasn't just a reflection.

"I've been asking myself that since last October," he replied, and he seemed to draw a little closer to you. His voice appeared to grow gentler, his eyes turning sleepily around the room. "It was like this, you know. We were sat here, and you were drunk. I kept trying to give you some water, but you just wanted company because you didn't know anyone but you and Phil." He looked back at you, letting out a fond, breathy sort of laugh as though thinking of something endearing. "You just kept talking and talking. It was really sweet, actually," he added as you seemed about to interrupt. "I found out more about you in one night than I did in almost a year. And it suddenly struck you that; wow, this girl is actually really interesting." You stared at him, unused to hearing much more than a mildly sarcastic comment by way of a compliment. "And she's fun, and a little bit weird, and even though she's awkward like me she's not afraid to look stupid." His cheeks dimpled in that adorable way they always did when he smiled, and it seemed to dawn on you for the first time just how much you really did love those dimples, and that smile. You could feel a dull warmth behind your eyes, and were suddenly aware that you were close to tears.

"Dan – "

"I've always really liked that about you," he said, and seemed about to continue before he falterd. He bowed his head for a moment, as though steeling himself, and when he looked up the light shone brighter in his eyes. "I've always really liked _you._ "

You didn't respond, too busy staring at him, incredulous, to form an entirely articulate response. Until now you'd never had so much of the slightest indication as to his feelings toward you being anything more than platonic, even despite what seemed to be fruitless attempts by Phil to play Cupid, so you were almost too shocked to accept what you were hearing – not that it wasn't unwelcome, for you'd rather had the suspicion of late that you were falling right into Phil's trap by thinking about Dan more often than you'd care to admit. Not that Phil was _ever_ allowed to know this.

"I don't understand," you croaked, which was mostly true – many hours' worth of drinking had seen to that – but only mostly; what little of you did understand could hardly dare to believe it. Dan reached up an almost shaky hand and cupped your cheek, and you felt the gentle warmth of his touch.

"I'm going all or nothing," he whispered in the smallest of breaths, before closing his eyes and kissing you. As you felt yourself kissing back, you heard fireworks whizzing into the sky outside as the new year began.


End file.
